iPhone 7 Headphone jack; resilient as you are ugly my friend

The Apple rumor mill have been churning out rumors and leaks, but you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the Internet. The California based tech giant is about to release its next generation smartphone, the iPhone 7, somewhere around September this year and we have seen some pretty crazy speculations raving on about the upcoming handset. One of the most popular is the removal of the headphones jack to slim down the device and provide headphone connectivity via the Lightning port. For months, everyone believed that the new iPhone 7 will ditch the decades old 3.5mm headphone jack and Apple will release a pair of Lightning port based headphones or earbuds along with the device.

Instead of the huge pile of rumors and leaks suggesting the absence of the headphones jack, a new part from China, which is claimed to be for the new iPhone 7, shows the good old jack along with the Lightning port assembly. The French website Nowhereelse.fr shared a picture of the Lightning port cable assembly designed for the upcoming Apple iPhone 7. The shared part is quite similar to the Lightning cable assembly of the current iPhone 6S apart from a few minor differences.

The cable, claimed for the new iPhone 7 was posted anonymously on the Chinese blog Weibo, which was accented by the French blog Nowhereelse.fr who has been correct a few times regarding rumors relating to upcoming Apple products. The cable assembly shows a number of smartphone components, including the fabled Apple Lightning port, cellphone antennas and a white headphones jack laid out in the familiar layout.

While this clearly rules out Apple ditching the headphones jack for a Lightning port based audio solution, it also vaguely points out that the dual stereo speakers setup may not be seen the iPhone 7 as well. We have all seen the leaked images of the purported iPhone 7 cover which shows cutouts on both sides of the cutout for the Lightning port on the bottom which fueled the “no headphones jack” and “dual speakers” rumors and sent the web into a frenzy.

So, there we have it. The next iPhone will have the stubborn and hard to kill headphones jack, while audiophiles may be rejoicing, those who wanted dual speakers and possibly a thinner handset may still have something to look forward to. The depicted cable assembly is claimed to be for the 4.7inch iPhone 7 and the larger iPhone 7 Plus or Pro model, the one with the dual camera module might see the removal of the headphones jack for Lightning port enabled headphones.

Now, we are to learn a quite valuable lesson here as well, and that is to not believe every leaked image or posted rumors we come across on the Web. The French blog Nowhereelse.fr commented that even they cannot validate the picture of the proposed Lightning port cable assembly, which could be a part manufactured by some Chinese counterfeiting company rather than Apple’s official manufacturing plant. Who knows it might be some Android device’s part, given that smartphones nowadays are all so similar on the outside, as well as on the inside. All we can say is, till Apple says its happening, it ain’t legit.